Doctor who: From which came life
by jammywho
Summary: The doctor is forced back in time to fight with beings of time, and comes face to face with someone familiar.
1. Old faces

This is the first part of my Doctor who series, which I hope you enjoy. This one takes place between the events of "victory of the daleks" and "Time of angels". Chapter one.

* * *

From the vast oceans to every side of it, something lifted its head just above the surface of the water. It didn't know exactly what it was looking for, but it knew it would know when it found it. Perhaps it had something to do with these strange new appendages it had formed, which made water travel slightly more difficult for it than the rest of its shoal.

As it was treading water furiously, something caught its eye. A faint shape appeared in the sky, a rough-looking circle, but only for the briefest of seconds. It looked around to see where the thing had gone, but instead of finding the shape, it saw something on the distance. It appeared to be some kind of rock floating on the water, which some weird kind of seaweed growing on it. This was it.

Without hesitation, it propelled itself through the water with its tail and slightly altered fins towards the rock. It was determined solely to get to its destination, and wasn't going to let anything get in its way. The tiktaalik, so determined it was, that it didn't even notice the green lightning arching up into the sky from the island. It had more important things.

River Song had met the Doctor on several occasions, most recently her adventure at the now infamous singing towers of Dorillian, and yet he had only met her five times, and knew nothing about her. It wasn't that she was a stalker, in fact she was his wife, except she had married him, but he hadn't married her yet. The events in their lives were doomed to be in the wrong order, so as she got older, he would get younger, and vice versa. Only, he didn't ever appear to grow older or younger, with the exception of a rare regeneration.

Her adventures with the doctor over the past few years had left her with an addiction towards excitement and danger. And she was determined not to limit herself to 51st century Earth, because the Doctor himself had confessed after what seemed like an artillery bombardment of questions that nothing much happened during that period. Whether he had said that to get out of telling her important details, or if it wasn't the truth, she didn't know, but she wasn't willing to take the risk of living a normal life.

So, she made many deals, some of which wouldn't be considered legal and eventually managed to get her hands on a vortex manipulator. She reasoned, as she had already met a Doctor who had been on all of their future adventures when she was younger, that she could go practically anywhere and meet him, as it had already happened in his timeline.

She wasn't limited to options with her vortex manipulator. It fact, she could go anywhere in time and space, in a similar way to the Doctor's tardis. Except her way was a lot more dangerous, as there would be nothing protecting her from the time radiation surrounding her, other than the clothes she wore.

As she entered the time-space co-ordinates into the miniature computer on her wrist, a silhouette that looked like a tadpole appeared on the screen. She barely had time to blink before the image disappeared into a shower of green sparks which leaped out of the screen and began to fly around the device on her wrist, forming circles in the air, gradually creeping up her arm and head, slowly swallowing the whole of her body in a green vortex. She tried to struggle, but she couldn't move any part of her body. Vortex manipulators shouldn't behave like this, she thought, the process was generally a lot faster. Perhaps someone had hijacked the system, or maybe it was a virus she'd picked up, but none of these suggestions made her feel any more comfortable, especially as her legs were starting to fade into the green vortex.

What felt like minutes to her were merely seconds to an onlooker (or would be, if there were any present), as River Song disappeared in a blinding flash of green light leaving only boot prints on the grass below.


	2. green lightning

Somewhere in London 2000, just before the New Year countdown began, a man wearing a trench coat was walking into a dark alley. His coat tails were drenched from being dragged through so many puddles, his long, curly hair drenched from the rain and his breath was tainted with the smell of alcohol. He had in fact downed at least six pints of beer, yet apart from the occasional swaying, he managed to stay upright surprisingly well. At the end of the valley, a large rectangular looking object was covered by a sheet of tarpaulin, which the man jerked off to reveal an ancient phone box from many years ago. An eerie green light emitted from every window and from the gap between its doors.

The man fumbled in his pocket for a key, unaware of the green sparks leaking from the box. He looked up at the box, then behind himself, then at the keyhole and produced the key, sighed, and attempted to ram it into the hole. On his third attempt, the key slotted in.

A green bolt of lightning shot down from the sky, avoided the various skyscrapers and lightning rods surrounding the alley, and struck the lamp at the top of the box. Green sparks crawled quickly down the sides of the box, through the key and into the man holding it. He screamed as green energy surrounded him and the box, as he felt time itself pulling him forcefully through history.

The Doctor practically danced around the console, pulling various levers, flicking switches and re-arranging… well, Amy reflected, she wasn't sure what he was re-arranging, but it probably had some complicated name or another. He seemed generally elated yet absorbed in his work. Based on her previous encounters, she felt completely safe with him inside his ship. That was until she saw an image flash briefly across the Tardis' monitor. It looked like some kind of creature to Amy, but even though she'd only been on two voyages with the Doctor, it still seemed out of place to her.

"Doctor?" she asked. He was confused at first as he came out of his trance, but he still kept his smile as he ambled over. She pointed at the image, and even as he turned his head, his smile faded to be replaced by a look of utmost fear. Quickly he dashed back to the console and entangled himself in the workings of the Tardis.

"Doctor, what's going on?" She asked again. The Doctor flung his head up to respond but she never got to hear what he had to say, for one reason, he replied far too quickly to comprehend, but another reason, perhaps the most important one, was that the monitor exploded in a shower of green sparks behind her as he was speaking.

It was at that moment that the tardis jerked into life. Parts of the console glowed green and shot sparks occasionally, while the Doctor and Amy were flung helplessly around as the tardis hurtled through time and space. Eventually, as the shaking died down, the Doctor managed to pull himself towards the console and once again set to work, almost fighting against the controls.

Amy had no idea what had just happened, but that was nothing new, because she'd been confused like this many times in just a few journeys with the Doctor. But judging by the look of terror on the Doctor's face, she felt it could wait.

In time, he retreated from the console, which was still spewing sparks, somewhat smug, but he was clearly paranoid about something. It was seconds before he even remembered Amy, who was lying against one of the tardis' walls.

"Sorry about that. Some kind of temporal interference. I'm afraid we've rather been tardisnapped."

Amy's eyebrows shot upward at a speed formally only reachable by rays of light.

"WHAT?"


	3. Arrival

The Doctor was taken aback momentarily, as you are when profanities are yelled at you in a loud Scottish accent. However he recovered quickly and calmly.

"It's alright," he said. "I've adjusted the Tardis' settings so we arrive a few hours earlier than intended, but I'm afraid there's no way to escape the pull."

"So? Have we been captured or not?" asked Amy, still sounding annoyed.

"Theoretically, no. What's happened is that someone or something has tried to travel through time, and has created a bit of a hole in time, rather like a pitfall, that we've fallen through, and we're being forced towards a certain date, presumably the same date the time traveller ship, person, etc."

She raised an eyebrow. "Can you repeat that?"

He stared at her. "It's sort of gravity, except in time, okay so far? Good. Right, so say you're falling. You can't stop yourself falling, but you can slow yourself down, or try to direct yourself."

"And this time …thing?"

"Yeah… I'm still working on that one. But the technology must be quite primitive. There should be some more telltale signs upon our arrival." He seemed optimistic, yet apprehensive at the same time. He was thrilled for the adventure and the mystery, but scared for the same reasons.

The tardis materialised in the middle of a wood. The Doctor knew this by the amount of branches that had suddenly appeared inside the tardis. He scanned the monitor and nodded, if sadly.

"Good, none of the systems appear damaged; the emergency protocols are still intact. For a hijacking, we came out of this surprisingly well. Bad news however, is that we are now part of events. Meaning, we're stuck here for a while."

Amy raised an eyebrow; "How long?"

The Doctor beamed his smile that reached his ears. It was the kind of smile that only appeared when the wearer is utterly embarrassed. "Three local weeks, give or take six months."

"That's not too bad." She lied. "Where?"

"Do you want to find out?" asked the Doctor. "The tardis sustains a suitable oxygen field, as well as a centred gravity, so even if we end up in space, we should be alright."

"What if there's some kind of volcano or something out there?"

"Yeah, I'd better go first."

He opened the door carefully, only just giving him enough room to get out. Amy followed him out into what appeared to be a vast jungle of various plants she'd never seen before.

The Doctor surveyed his surroundings. "Ah. The soil composition suggests Earth. Good! Lots of ferns and things, but no wildlife anywhere, so I'd put us somewhere between 300 and 500 million years BC, Devonian period."

"So, dinosaurs?" Amy guessed.

"Wouldn't say so, too early, too quiet, listen… see? Sea? Yes! Look! Good, we're near the sea. Food!" He went on rambling, but his voice sped up and got quieter, so Amy couldn't here what he said next, although, in fairness, she hadn't been trying as hard after she'd heard the word 'food'. She realised that she two was starving. They hadn't had anything to eat during the dalek fiasco in wartime England, and she was beginning to feel the effects.

The Doctor broke off some branches from a nearby tree, pulling some apart for the green tubes inside them and started tying them together. With his mind elsewhere he ran towards the sea, closely followed by Amy. Neither of whom saw the clouds converging on a symbol bulging in the sky above them.


	4. War

The Doctor and Amy had been stranded on Earth for nearly a week now, living off mainly plants and whatever the Doctor could salvage from the tardis. There wasn't anything on the beach when they arrived other than seaweed, but the Doctor was elated, and regaled her with the time that he had invented sushi.

"You invented sushi?" she asked, doubtfully.

"Nah." smiled the Doctor. "But it's a good story, isn't it?"

"Anything else you've been lying to me about?" asked Amy, jokingly, but the Doctor turned to her his face as serious as death.

"I don't lie to my companions, Miss Pond, unless it's unavoidable or necessary. But there is something I may need to reconsider. I don't think I explained that situation quite clearly enough. If we've been forced towards some kind of time gravity, then something sent it, and activated it."

"I don't get it, invented what?"

"In the future, there was a sort of time travel arms race between the Timoreen and a human hybrid race. Conventional war was getting them nowhere, and new soldiers were created faster than they were killed. Billions were killed and billions more were to be slaughtered, so both sides invested in research into time travel. One of the new human's scientists discovered time lord technology and created a machine that could send objects back in time, and used it to send a sort of time magnet back in time to when the first Timoreen were born. This magnet was able to pull a fleet of warships to that period to kill the Timoreen, so that they never existed. It's entirely possible that the problems with the tardis are a result of one of these time magnets."

"So what's coming here?" asked Amy, suddenly cold.

The Doctor was unresponsive for a while, looking down at the ground, before turning to Amy sadly and muttering, "I don't know".

He lay down on the grass, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath. Suddenly his eyes shot open and he sniffed the air. "Do you smell that?"

"What?"

"Burning, burning! Can't you smell it?" The Doctor asked frantically.

Amy stood up and looked around. "But there's no smoke, nothing."

"Ah, but it's time travel isn't it? We smell the burning, before the burning actually happens. Something else is coming back in time."

The Doctor looked up. "Those clouds, what is it? What's happening?"

Amy looked up. "It looks like a… tadpole."

"Run." said the Doctor, quietly at first. "Run. Run, Amy run!"

They sprinted away from the beach as green sparks danced across the clouds. The sparks came together and tore through the sky in a massive green lightning bolt, setting fire to surrounding trees.

The Doctor looked back to see a figure in the middle of the burning ferns, who collapsed almost instantly, and he stops, gazing in amazement.

"Doctor, what's going on?" Amy asked. "Is it a time traveller? An alien? What?"

Before she could say anything more, the Doctor ran into the flames and picked up the figure, dragging it out from the ferns. He emerged, grinning. On closer inspection, Amy could tell it was a woman with curly blonde hair.

"Who is she?"

"Amy Pond, meet River Song."

River lifted her head until she could see the Doctor's face.

"Hello, Sweetie."


End file.
